Performance maker Tamara Micner’s online show ‘Old Friends’ is a peculiar bag. Part-slumber party, part-storytelling show, it taps into a relatively universal experience, that of losing a childhood best friend; something that relates to all of our lives: who among us are still in touch with everyone we held close as children?
The title is drawn from Simon & Garfunkel, a famously broken friendship whose songs underscore the whole show. Micner takes us from when she met Roe in primary school, to growing up together, moving countries and sharing a flat together as adults, until a rift occurs in the relationship when Roe wants to move in with her boyfriend, leaving the flat she currently shares with Tamara and her partner. It doesn’t take much after that before the friendship implodes, and Micner hasn’t heard from Roe in a while. Micner punctuates the narrative with breaks that return us to the ‘sleepover’ mise en scene: we’re invited to play truth or dare and do the Macarena, amongst other sleepover-esque activities, the nostalgia value of which may have been a little lost on me (I didn’t have that kind of childhood).
That’s the pitch, but it doesn’t always hang together. Many of the snapshots of the relationship we’re shown don’t have obvious narrative bite, such as a piece narrated in detail where Tamara felt Roe had breached her trust by peeking at the ingredients of a failed surprise cake. And the piece bills itself as an exploration of losing your childhood best friend, but Micner’s experience seems more complex than that: very few of us would have a friend from primary school we would stil refer to in our thirties as our ‘platonic wife’, as Micner does. Maybe that’s partly the point – Micner is clearly exploring why women are socialised to be close friends but put romantic relationships with men first – but the show wants to have it both ways: is this an experience as universal as a sleepover, or an unusual relationship which pushes at a social boundary?
The simplicity of the snapshots we’ve seen belies the substantial psychological complexity of the situation we find them in by the time they are adult, and the relationship is splintering,
At the same time, Micner doesn’t take time to consider her own responsibilty for the friendship breakup, or even Roe’s point of view, which isn’t endearing. I also couldn’t help tuning out when Tamara accused Roe of not ‘presencing’ her in phone calls to her parents, though in my experience Americans and Canadians are more at home with this sort of psychobabble than us Brits.
The strongest element of using Zoom as a hybrid performance mode comes when writing appears on the screen, and I would have enjoyed seeing more of this – perhaps there are opportunties for playfulness with the performer in dialogue with the writing. Elsewhere, some physical sequences on the Zoom stage don’t seem to contain much meaning, and a scene staged ‘over Skype’ feels like a missed opportunity to acknowledge the difficulties of communication that the medium can bring.
It also isn’t the cuddly chlidhood throwback it initially appears. Beneath the exterior of sleepover snacks and truth or dare it explores quite a deeply intimate unresolved relationship between two adults and has more than a little group therapy in its DNA – we are quite literally asked if we have any advice for Tamara in her real-life situation, and if we have lost someone the way she has. While there wouldn’t be a ‘trigger warning’ for this per se, the piece invites audiences to be candid about their experiences, and I won’t pretend it didn’t raise issues for me that, much like Tamara, I haven’t fully processed. In the wrong mood, I’d have found it tough, and I came away questioning how much I was supposed to enjoy it, despite the cutesy exterior.
However, it’s a warm-hearted and well-intentioned piece with some strong moments. Making a piece designed for Zoom — especially one that’s pay what you feel — is laudable in these unstable times, when not all of us will be able to go to the theatre and may be struggling in isolation.
